As the use of computers in both the workforce and personal life has increased, so has the desire to allow for easier use of them. Many operating systems today utilize a windows based configuration of application programs. Information is displayed on a display screen in what appears to be several sheets of paper. By interfacing with the windows, a user can access any window as if grabbing a single sheet of paper. A windows based configuration allows a user to have two or more windows open on a screen simultaneously.
One common configuration is to show multiple parts of a single document, like sheets in Microsoft® Excel by Microsoft® Corporation of Redmond, Wash., or multiple documents in a single window, like source code and reference material in Microsoft® Visual Studio by Microsoft® Corporation of Redmond, Wash. Most recently, it has appeared in web browsers, including Opera software by Opera Software ASA of Oslo, Norway, Mozilla Firefox software by the Mozilla Organization of Mountain View, Calif., and Apple Safari by Apple Computer, Inc. of Cupertino, Calif., as a feature called tabbed browsing. All of these implementations introduce the ability for the user to access the set of tabs and quickly reopen a set of tabs at the same time. In these systems, the tabs are inside the top-level window frame, and the contents of each tab are similar, dialog box controls or web pages, for example.
Presently, independent and external windows cannot be grouped together, so heterogeneous windows cannot be managed together. A similar invention has been used before, as in tabbed dialog box windows or tabbed web browser pages. Operating systems do not currently allow for multiple windows to be associated with each other so that an operation performed on one window cannot be performed automatically on a second independent and external window.